


Two Bits

by Scappodaqui



Series: Scraps [9]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: "I have some ideas for the uniform", Actual 1940s Jokes, And Gets One, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bad Jokes, Bad Puns, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky's blue coat, Captain America Comics, Captain America's kid sidekick, Epistolary, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, In-Jokes, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Humor, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, Puns & Word Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 18:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5101817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui/pseuds/Scappodaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bucky realized he still owed Lou money. Twenty-five cents for an egg.  He guessed he could send that with the letter but what would his two bits mean, really? They got the ten thousand dollars from his insurance.  He guessed probably that didn’t mean much, either.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Steve and Bucky discusss the Captain America comics and figure out how to spend the rest of their down time before their first mission.  Bucky writes a letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Bits

“So the Captain America comics,” Bucky said, shoving his hands in his pockets as they walked through the chill morning air down to breakfast. He let Steve go first, so he could look at him. Steve moved differently. He didn’t seem to be braced against an invisible wind anymore. His big shoulders looked relaxed, his body fluid. Bucky caught up with him at the bottom of the hill, running down the last few steps across damp, frost-crunchy grass, and slapped him on the back. “That was all bullshit, that you illustrated them? You meant you were _in_ ‘em.”

“Well, it was classified,” Steve said. “It wasn’t bullshit. I just couldn’t tell you.”

“Huh.” Bucky said. He ducked his head. “Here I was reading all the comics like a dingus, looking for the lines you’d inked. Seeing if I could pick ‘em out.”

“You’re not a--what’s a _dingus_?” Steve’s arm came around him, squeezed, and dropped away. They were moving carefully apart as they got closer to the camp. Bucky tried to shake off the memories that clung to him like cobwebs. Of Steve’s mouth. Of the sweaty sheen on his back when he had turned away for a moment, and the damp flick of his tongue when he’d turned back. He tried to blink it all away, to put it back on the island where it belonged. Waiting for the next time they got to go there.

“Oh, Lou used to…” Bucky shrugged. “Used to call us all that, when we did something stupid.”

_Shit._

He hadn’t written Lou’s parents. He’d said he would. He just hadn’t been able to face it yet; not in between writing his own. His own parents and his sisters, who’d had to read the telegram from the Army saying he had been lost somewhere in Northern Italy. Missing in action. He could just hear what Ruthie would’ve had to say about that, sharp things, high-pitched crying. And his mother staring at the stash of candy she’d saved up and now had no one to send it to. But they knew he was all right now. He’d written them back immediately, in the wash of incredulity that he was alive himself. He couldn’t even remember what words he’d written home. Just an explosion of relief scattered over paper. He half-expected they’d open up the envelope to find confetti inside. But they’d know what it meant.

It meant that the whole of Azzano, the whole of Kreischberg, were behind him just like any other trackless stretch of days from this war--behind him like beach sand beaten gradually clear of footprints by the waves. Soon they faded to nothing. They sank away, their sharp outlines entirely erased.

“Bucky?”

“Oh,” Bucky said. He wanted badly to take Steve’s hand, but he knew from Steve’s uncertain smile and the suddenly stiffer set to his jaw that they couldn’t, not so close to camp. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Glad I don’t have to look for you in the comics anymore.”

“I really am sorry I lied about that.”

“Don’t be. You had to, right? And, hey. I was looking at you anyway. You were in the comic.”

Steve sighed, looking at Bucky sidelong.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, agreeing with his frustration. It wasn’t the same, not really; it wasn’t enough. “But we waited that long, and we made it, anyhow.”

“It was worth the wait,” Steve said.

“Well, we got a little weekend now. We’ll make a holiday out of it. First we gotta get you fed up. Takes a lot these days, huh?”

“Sure seems to.” Steve’s smile was teasing. Bucky almost tripped rolling his eyes back at him.

The sounds of camp rang in close. Men’s voices, raised in varying pitch of orders given, banter, and complaint. The rumble of half-tracks and tanks. The smell of old grease and smoke on the air. Antiseptic and sulfa from the medical tents.

When they got to mess they saw they weren’t the only ones who had appeared in the last five minutes breakfast was being served. In fact, that was fairly standard for any day the men in the camp had no orders: they made a last-minute rush on the food, stretching sleep out as long as possible. A meandering line of bedraggled soldiers trailed out of the mess. He and Steve waited their turn in line. Either Bucky was imagining it, or a lot of heads happened to crane themselves toward Steve.

Inside the mess, he saw they’d cooked up the eggs with the bread this time. Dunking stale bread in a mush made of powdered eggs and condensed milk produced a passable French toast. Bucky gave Steve the first plate they gave him, then handed him another plate, too, so he had one in each hand. Bucky’s raised eyebrow dared the cook to comment on his commandeering of the extra rations. Steve gave the man an apologetic smile.

“French toast,” Bucky said, once they’d sat down, having located the extremely woebegone Commandos. Dugan was puffing on a reviving cigar and eyed Bucky curiously. Buck rubbed at the side of his neck, afraid Steve had made a mark there.

Dernier made a grunting sound through his nose. “Heuh. It is not _French_.”

Monty said, “Not endorsed by de Gaulle, this toast?”

Dernier pointed his fork at Monty. “He accepts only the best.”

“He ought to take any help he can get at the moment,” Monty said.

Dernier muttered a curse, which Monty shrugged off.

“Hey, more power to him if he has de Gaulle to name his own toast,” Bucky broke in. “That’s fine by me.”

Dugan groaned.

“De Gaulle,” Bucky insisted, raising his coffee in a toast to himself. Even Steve was rolling his eyes. “You know, like _the gall_.”

“Was he like this before?” Dugan asked Steve. “And if not, how do we get him to stop?”

“I’ll let you know when I find out,” said Steve. “I _could_ just give him an order, but for now I think I’ll let it go.”

“You better,” Bucky said, and kicked him under the table.

Morita was eyeing his food with deep apprehension. He pushed it away and let his head flop forward on the table, instead.

“Had yourselves a night?” Bucky said.

“Seems there’s a local liqueur that’s a close relative of absinthe,” Jones said. “It had something of a kick, and I say that as one whose weapon of choice is a Browning.”

“Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder?” Bucky suggested.

Dugan groaned, but Steve said, “Okay, okay.”

Bucky cleared his throat and took a hasty bite of French toast.

“So you know Lysistrata’s a lady?” Dugan said. “Gabe wore a skirt and everything.”

“It’s a great play,” Jones said. “The women in Greece decide not to fuck their husbands unless they ended the Peloponnesian war. It’s by Aristophanes.”

“Who the fuck is Aristophanes?” Dugan and Bucky said in unison. Dugan shook a finger at him. Really, Bucky knew, and probably Dugan did also, that it had to be the name of a Greek guy. There had been a Greek regiment fighting with the British in Southern Italy; the guys in it had names like that. Lots of vowels and ‘istos’.

“So the women stopped letting their husbands fuck ‘em and they thought that would stop the fighting?” Bucky said.

“Morale is important,” Steve said, with great earnestness.

Jones gave a startled laugh. Dugan roared. Morita looked up, bleary-eyed, and smiled.

“A very fair point,” Monty allowed.

Bucky couldn’t stop grinning at Steve. They got it, they saw it. How he didn’t take himself too seriously, even though he did take other things seriously. Steve wasn’t--he was the opposite of a dingus, if there were such a thing. A mensch, like Mrs. Rosen said. _Steve, you’re a mensch,_ she had said when he’d drawn funny cartoon labels for all the pickle jars, free of charge, just because sales were down.

“I think it’s a world record,” Dugan said.

“What?” said Bucky.

“Well, you’ve been sitting here a full fifteen minutes and haven’t asked about the mail yet.”

They went outside after breakfast and stood there for awhile, trying to decide what to do next. The town hadn’t been anything to write home about, Dugan had told Bucky. It might’ve been better if it were warmer but it wasn’t. Their breath huffed out clouds in front of their faces. It made Bucky want a cigarette, so he fumbled for his Lucky Strikes and lit one.

“You want?” he said to Steve.

“I’m all right,” Steve said, standing back, eyes on Bucky as he cupped his hand around the flame, then remembered he didn’t have to and just pursed his lips to blow out smoke.

“It won’t make your heart race anymore, I bet,” Bucky said. That was why Steve hadn’t smoked at home. It made him feel funny, and cough, even the stupid cigarettes made with belladonna that were supposed to help with that.

“Still kind of does,” Steve said. He tipped his head back, contemplating.

Bucky smiled despite himself. “Geez, you’re a sap. Were you always such a sap?”

“I guess the serum didn’t cure everything,” Steve said.

“It’s like that joke,” Bucky said. “Doctor, after the surgery, will I be able to play the violin, and then the doctor goes, well, could you play a violin before?”

“Was that in your comedy routine?”

“Yeah, it was. That was like a door, that routine. Don’t try it until you’ve knocked it. I mean don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

“That was pretty bad, Buck.”

“Well, I didn’t get a serum that made me better at jokes.” Bucky realized it might seem like he was jealous, or something, so he added, “It’s a good thing there already is a serum that makes jokes better. It’s called likker, and you give it to your audience.”

“It won’t work on me.”

 _“_ You don’t need it,” Bucky said. “Because you’ll listen and you’ll love it anyhow. On account of you’re a sap.”

“I’m a sap,” Steve said complacently. “Only where you’re involved.” He shook himself. “Okay, pass it over. I’ll try a puff.”

“It’s not reefer, Steve.”

Steve took a long careful drag of the cigarette, and coughed, and made a face. He handed it back to Bucky. “Everything tastes stronger,” he said. “Smells are stronger, too. I can still…” He trailed off.

Bucky said, “Oh. Geez.” Because they did. They smelled like sex.

“I don’t think anyone else can smell that much.”

“No, they can’t. We all stink anyway. It’s too cold for most of ‘em to shower.”

“You don’t stink.”

“No. I smell.”

“You don’t smell.”

“I do smell. And you stink.”

He was telling jokes because, even still, there was so much they couldn’t just come out and say. Not where everyone could be listening.

Steve was actually sniffing at one armpit. He lowered his arm when he saw Bucky’s expression.

“Do you need to get mail?” he said.

“Nah,” Bucky said. “My folks haven’t had time to write--hey! What’re you gonna tell them?”

Steve frowned. “I don’t know. I guess I can’t keep saying I’m in California. They’re going to make Captain America public. Actually, all of you, all of us, our whole unit, is going to be in the comics now. So we can keep up bond sales without doing all those USO shows. A guy came to talk to me about that. I think he wants to talk to all of you, too, so you’ll have to see him at some point.”

“Wait, I get to be in the comics?”

Steve grinned at him, and Bucky realized he must look awfully excited about it. “It’s not such a great thing. They take a lot of liberties in those.”

“How bad can it be? I liked reading them.”

“Not all bad. Some of it’s just twisted around to keep from giving away Army secrets. That’s what the guy said, and it makes sense to me. It’s propaganda, just like that movie.”

“I liked that movie. I liked watching you in it.”

A funny little smile played on Steve’s mouth, not as false as the one he wore in the film. Just shy. He wasn’t good at taking compliments, Steve, despite years of Bucky trying to teach him how by example.

“Of course, it would’ve been better with me in it, too,” Bucky went on, talking right over Steve’s mild discomfort so it would vanish without Steve’s even knowing it. “I bet I look great on film.”

“I think they’re going to make some newsreels. You’ll get to be in those.”

“My parents’ll love seeing that.”

“Right, your parents,” Steve said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down, frowning. “I still don’t know what to tell them. There’s an official story about the serum I’m supposed to give. I’m supposed to say it’s just some special vitamin drink. An experiment for our soldiers. But that’s a lie, too. I don’t want to lie to your folks twice.”

Bucky took a drag on his cigarette, which was almost burnt out. He blew out the red tip of it with a few quick breaths, watching ash drift off through the air. “We’re never gonna be able to tell the whole truth. I can make something up, if you want.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Steve said.

“You will.” Bucky flicked away his cigarette and brought his hand up to touch Steve’s shoulder, just a brush. “You’ll figure it out. You can tell them whatever you want. It can’t be as stupid as carrots improving your vision. That’s the official story to gloss over our radar, you know, and that new Eureka machine we got for airplane landings. It pings radar back and forth between the plane and the ground, it’s the newest thing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Steve was used to Bucky going on about this stuff. “Agent Carter and Mr. Stark mentioned something like that.”

“It’s really new. It’s amazing.”

“I’ll ask about it. We’ve got an awful lot to sort out. The Hydra weapons… my outfit... at least I don’t have red boots anymore. That would be a liability in the field.”

“Sure, fine. That’s practical. But I can’t believe they took away the tights.”

“Jerk.”

“I liked them.”

“I felt pretty dumb in them.”

“You didn’t realize why people were staring, that’s all.”

“So what do you want to do today?” Steve looked around, clearly trying to change the subject--either because he was embarrassed, or because they were getting too obvious again. “We could go back up the hill.”

“It’s pretty cold. I could show you how to make a fire, like Boy Scouts. Remember when we wanted to do that?”

“We _tried_ to do that. In your ma’s flower pot.”

“Rubbing two sticks together is _bullshit_ ,” Bucky said. “It didn’t work.”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, looking studiedly at his feet. “We could try that again.”

“Steven G. Rogers, I don’t know what you’re suggesting.” Bucky made himself look scandalized.

“Come on,” Steve said.

“Gimme a second. I want to get some paper and stuff… I have to write a letter.”

“Who’re you writing to?”

“It’s one of those things,” Bucky said. He trailed off. “It’s just a thing I gotta do.” Steve had said it in his letter: he had said Bucky ought to tell him everything. And Bucky’d asked Lou to do just that, if Bucky died.

But he was here, he was still here, he was all right. “I said I’d write some people in Jersey. Don’t even tell me about it.”

“It’s not someone from Paramus, is it?”

“No, Hoboken.” Bucky had gotten the exact address from Major Markowitz, just to be sure. Lou had been proud of being from Hoboken. He said they invented baseball there a hundred years ago. Bucky had his doubts. He’d have to look it up when they got home. The Army was full of people trying to tell you things and you never knew what was just made up. “Anyhow. I’ve got to write. I made a promise. You know I keep my promises.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s voice cracked. “Yeah, I know.”

“So do you,” Bucky said.

They looked at each other.

“Well, you know,” Bucky said. He’d gotten Steve’s last letter belatedly, after they’d come back from the rescue. Reading it had made him feel like this all might be a dream. Steve had promised he’d go AWOL to find Bucky, and then, just like he’d predicted the future--he had. It gave Bucky a peculiar kind of faith. He hadn’t been superstitious when he started out, he really hadn’t. He hadn’t carried around a rabbit’s foot like Sol. But he’d had that parachute silk, and then he’d sent it to Steve, and Steve had brought it back to him. It was a magician’s handkerchief trick: hope pulled from under draped cloth, from where there’d been only thin air.

“You know what we oughtta do,” Bucky said, shaking his head to clear it. “You gotta meet Billie, if he’s awake and can talk now.” He hadn’t been awake on the march back from Kreischberg, as he’d taken shrapnel from a blast directly to the face. They’d had to put him in one of the captured tanks. “He’s a real big fan of the comics.”

Steve looked up; he’d been looking at Bucky but in a funny way, looking not at his eyes, or even at his mouth, but somewhere lower down, his jaw maybe--maybe because it had been the perspective he’d always had, hovering right near shoulder height. “Yeah, sure, I’d do that. If they really meant something to him.”

“You’d better believe it,” Bucky said, grabbing Steve by the arm again and tugging. “He traded a picture of his sister to the tank crews for an issue, so give him hell for that.”

The medical tent. Bucky didn’t like the medical tent, so he’d avoided going there, and besides they’d had Billie on morphine, quite a lot of it. Bucky remembered how that felt from his wound and sort of missed it. The floating feeling. He couldn’t think too clearly about anything but he also didn’t particularly want to. Sex had made him feel like that too; being with Steve made him feel like that, like he could somewhat let go.

Billie was near the back of the second row, which was good. It meant he wasn’t a top priority anymore. At first Bucky couldn’t tell if he was awake, once he and Steve had angled themselves gently between cots; he had most of his face wrapped up, including one eye.

Billie would have grinned to see him, Bucky bet, if he could’ve moved his face more. As it was he made a big, excited gesture with one arm. The soft constricted tone of his voice was at great odds with his personality. “Sarge,” he said, when he saw Bucky.

“Yeah, Bill, it’s me,” Bucky said. “And I brought you the latest Captain America. Also known as Steve Rogers.” He pulled Steve forward by one shoulder so he’d lean over far enough for Billie to see; Steve responded with some surprise but leaned down to nod, very gravely. The one eye of Billie’s they could see opened up wide.

“Sir,” Billie said, muffled under gauze. “I am honored.” There was a long pause during which his throat worked, and then he said, quiet so Bucky had to lean down though he guessed Steve heard fine, “Wait. Sarge. Your friend Steve?”

“Yeah,” Bucky broke in, “You were knocked out for it but that’s him all right, he dove in and saved us all. Just like the comic you showed me where he fights with the 107th.”

“Shit,” Billie said, still in that funny soft monotone; and then, “Sorry, Sir. Sorry, Sarge.”

“It’s no trouble,” Steve said. “I was just glad to help out you guys who were really brave enough to be fighting out here. Bucky told me a lot of good things about you.”

Billie’s one-eyed glance at Bucky held shades of the accusatory.

“I also,” Bucky went on, “told him about your little birthday situation. So Captain America’s come to tell you you better get your ass back to New Hampshire.” He had not, in fact, informed Steve of this plan. “Leave, freeze, or die, right?”

“Not what that means,” Billie said, muffled.

“Think about your ma,” Bucky said. “Think about your sister.”

“She wishes she were here too,” Billie said.

“She’s fifteen,” Bucky said. “She wishes you were home and won’t say so.”

Steve made a small noise next to him, and then said, “Your Sergeant’s right, but I know how you feel.”

“See, Captain America,” Billie said. “Wow. Oh. Are you really or are you joking?”

“I’ve punched out Hitler over two hundred times,” Steve assured him. “Though I suppose I should tell you, the guy who played Hitler in our USO show was actually named Bill too.”

“Oh boy,” Billie said, in half a sigh. His eye shut for a minute, and he pulled up one knee fitfully. He was in pain, still, and they were probably bothering him, and he needed to sleep.

“But Bucky’s right,” Steve said, and Bucky elbowed him hard in the ribs. Steve’s expression turned wry. “He’s right, but it’s also your choice.”

“Steve,” Bucky said.

“It’s your choice,” Steve said. “But you’ve got a family and here you’ve got a Sergeant who’s telling you what he thinks, and from what I hear it’s a good idea to listen to your Sergeant.”

“Yessir,” Billie said. Bucky remembered how he’d said he wanted to go home, that night in their foxhole, sniffling, his teeth chattering, just shaking because too many shells had been falling around them for him to jump at every one: so instead just a constant kind of shiver. He wanted to go home. He was probably just being ornery now to impress Captain America.

Though it was true--a lot of times injured men were that much more eager to get back to the fighting. Like scratching at the scab. He’d felt that way. Like he wanted to get back as soon as possible, to erase the memory of the shrapnel wound. To replace the bad luck with good.

“Tell you what,” Bucky said, “We can ask if they’ll put you in the Captain America comics yourself. How ‘bout it, Steve? Give Captain America a kid sidekick?”

Steve nodded. “Sure, I can ask.”

“Because,” Bucky went on, “That oughtta be how it is only in the comics, and in real life, you safe at home reading ‘em. With your bugs.”

“Beetles,” said Billy.

“You’ll keep an eye on the home front for us,” Bucky went on, and Billy groaned, softly. Hopefully at the joke, not the pain.

“My eye is gonna be okay,” he said, closing the one he’d had open. “They said. It’s gonna be okay.”

“That’ll teach you to make like Dum Dum and not wear your helmet,” Bucky said. “Jesus, Billie, you know better’n that.”

“I do,” said Billie Do.

“But you _didn’t_ ,” Bucky said, and he felt Steve push against his arm a little and realized he’d raised his voice. “Sorry,” he said.

“You sign my comic?” Billie said, to Steve this time, and Steve said, “Yeah, of course. I’ll sign the one with the 107th in it, if I can find a copy.”

“Dunno where it is,” Billie said. “Had one in the shirt, but the Nazis with ray guns took it away.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Bucky said, “We’ll find you a new one.”

“Dugan okay?” Billie asked.

“Yes,” Steve said, and Bucky said, “Yeah.”

“Lou got hurt too,” Billie said. “Right? I thought he did.”

“Yeah,” said Bucky.

“He get to go home?” Billie said.

Bucky looked at Steve for a second, then down at the floor, then back at Billie. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, you know.”

“You always…” Billie sighed. “Okay, Sarge,” he said.

“Yeah?” Bucky said. But Billie didn’t say anything else. He looked like he’d gone to sleep, or maybe just didn’t feel like talking anymore. His eye closed.

They stood there for a moment to see if he’d wake up, but he didn’t. Bucky supposed he might really be asleep, and he tugged at a nurse’s sleeve as she came by.

“How’s he doing?” he asked, motioning down.

“Oh, just fine,” she said, smiling, Bucky noticed, but not at him; at Steve. “Seeing you two’s been real good for him, I can just tell. You ought to stick around, sign everyone’s comics.”

Steve shrugged.

“It’s true, that gentleman over there said you saved him yourself,” the nurse said, gesturing, and Steve gave a smile not quite as awkward as the one he’d worn onscreen in Captain America: Freedom on the Front!

“Yeah, Steve,” Bucky said, “I mean--Captain America. I bet you read the comic, right?” he told the nurse, who had leaned down to check on the patient in the next bed and now straightened, rather self-consciously in his opinion. “I bet you saw that movie, too, Freedom on the Front? That was great, wasn’t it?”

He felt Steve step on the back of his shoe, but Bucky just kept on his most sparkling smile.

She agreed that the movie was very good.

They stuck around the tent so Steve could sign comics; a surprising number of men and several nurses were able to produce their own copies, and Bucky grabbed one to leave next to Billie for when he woke up.

* * *

 They made their escape and set off up the hill again. The air was thin and cold on the way to the broken-down house. It was good he’d picked this house; it had a nice vantage point down on the camp, and you could see anyone approaching long before they got there. Who knew what people thought about why he and Steve were headed up there. He tried not to worry about it too much. Plenty of guys found places to hide out sometimes.

When they got there, Steve looked askance at the wobbly chair again. He never could stop picking at things until they got better. He ruined a lot of drawings erasing, though Bucky thought they were just fine the way he’d started them, sketchy lines and all. But Steve, Steve had an idea in his head about how things were supposed to look.

“We ought to start a fire. Are you cold?” Bucky said.

“I’m really not,” Steve said.

Bucky shuffled up to him anyhow, unbuttoning the new blue coat he’d gotten when they’d made it back to base, which had the funny SSR wing symbol on the sleeve. He opened it, letting in a rush of cool air, and then pulled it closed around Steve, who wore just a castoff field uniform, while Howard Stark worked on his real outfit.

“I always wanted to do this when you got cold at home. But I couldn’t.”

“I don’t need it now.” It was true; his body felt hot and solid against Bucky’s.

“Maybe I need it,” Bucky said.

They stood there for awhile, and then Bucky tipped his chin up, and Steve swooped down to press their lips together: sudden, like a P-38 fighter darting to kiss a low hill on reconnaissance.

“I gotta,” Bucky said, after a minute. “I gotta write that letter, or I’ll be thinking about it all day. But I want to keep…” They kissed again. His mouth almost hurt from all the kissing; they hadn’t even stopped to shave on the way up from the hospital tent, so he worried he’d get a red burn on his face, or one on Steve’s, though he’d seen one of Steve’s shaving cuts close up right in front of his eyes so maybe not. He didn’t want to stop, anyhow. Just feeling the wet warmth of Steve’s mouth on him made him feel renewed, awash, the way he felt when he got to dive deep down into the lake after a long time out in the field. It made him feel safe.

“I guess I ought to let you," Steve said.

“I don’t want you to be bored. What’re you going to do? Hey--you ought to keep writing up what you want from that uniform. Do a drawing.”

“You’ll help me with ideas?”

“I’ve got a few. You ought to do armor plating in there. The armor they tried to give us guys was too heavy, but I bet you can handle it.”

“That’s a good one. What about you, though?”

“I don’t need it. I’m usually too far away to get hit with anything much, but you’ll be right in the thick of things.”

This was another one of the things they weren’t, Bucky guessed, going to talk about too much. Kreischberg had been Steve’s first combat. Bucky remembered his. Even just pulling the trigger on his gun had been hard, and there Steve had been, snapping necks, crushing skulls with the butt of the Nazis’ own rifles. It had to bother him, Bucky knew it had to bother him, but talking about that kind of thing only made it worse. It was better to let it stay between the pages of a comic book, rendered in clean black lines and silly sound effects. Captain America, and Steve Rogers only did the inking.

“It ought to have a belt, too,” Bucky went on. “I like having something to grab at, you know.” His hand went down, and Steve groaned.

“Your letter,” he reminded Bucky, but he let his hips twitch forward anyhow.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, ducking to undo Steve’s belt and sliding his own cold hand down inside Steve’s pants. “I’ll get to it.”

* * *

 Lou’s real name was Ludovico. Ludovico Cristallo. No wonder he had never told anybody that. The funny part was that Bucky had always thought Lou immune to silly nicknames, and there he had been, with a whole name that was silly in itself. Silly to Bucky, he supposed. Not to the actual Italians, for whom it was probably a perfectly respectable sort of name.

 _Dear Mr. and Mrs. Cristallo_ , Bucky wrote.

He and Steve sat at the cracked table. Steve was not writing down his list of ideas. He instead had his chin propped on his fist, and he was doodling; Bucky couldn’t see what he’d put down on the page.

They’d both kicked off their boots. Bucky had one of his feet in Steve’s lap. They’d gotten a fire going in the little fireplace in one corner. It almost cut through the November chill.

Bucky took a breath and went back to the letter.

_I had the honor of serving next to your son Ludovico, or Lou as we all knew him. He was a really good guy. He was a stand-up guy. I bet you already knew that because you raised him to be that but I thought that the opinion of someone who was with him to the end might mean something. He was smarter than probably all the rest of us and he was quite the singer, also._

That was true, Bucky thought. He sometimes felt like he was smarter than a lot of the guys around him; but Lou had been, too. Lou had ragged on them all a lot and maybe that was why, maybe he just couldn’t believe this was where he’d wound up: in a troop with a weird circus man like Dugan, a queer like Bucky, and a sixteen-year-old kid like Billie. But he’d stuck by them anyhow, even though the whole thing was ridiculous. Tramping around in the mud with a circus strongman and a kid sidekick and this guy, this dumb guy, Bucky, who wouldn’t stop trying to make bad jokes at him. Who always tried to see the bright side even when it was pretty dark. But then Lou made jokes too. So Bucky didn’t know about that.

_He was a sharp fellow and he was also very funny, he made us all laugh._

Bucky hadn’t laughed; he hadn’t let himself. He should’ve. Maybe Lou would have thought the same thing, if he’d lived and had to write to Bucky’s family.

_He was also a civilizing influence. I don’t know what he was like at home but out here, even when we were camping out somewhere, he always had his tent set up just like home. He talked about you all with great fondness, and he said he was glad, even despite the circumstances, that he got to see your homeland and help them out._

_What I wanted to tell you about in particular is one time he saved my life. I guess that must be cold comfort, and I’m sorry I can’t offer more, but here’s how it is. We got hit with a shell nearby and almost no one spotted that I was down flat on my face except him. He saw a lot of what was going on around him and he didn’t try to blind himself to the realities of the situation. He rounded up the rest of the guys even though they were all running around scared and got them to help me up. He knew what was going on, Lou did, and he knew what you had to do._

_I am more sorry than I can tell you that it had to end like this for him. There’s really not a whole lot to say. He ought to have had a long life and a family of his own and a nice house with flowers in it every day. You must know how he liked flowers, and singing, and jokes. The rest of us got to have a little bit of that and it meant something to us. We’ll remember him._

_With Great Respect and Condolences,_  
_Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes_

Bucky realized he still owed Lou money. Twenty-five cents for an egg. He guessed he could send that with the letter but what would his two bits mean, really? They got the ten thousand dollars from his insurance. He guessed probably that didn’t mean much, either.

Bucky looked up when he was done, and there was Steve, watching him.

“Hey,” Steve said.

“Hey,” said Bucky.

“You wrote what you said you’d write?” Steve said, shifting in his chair, squeezing one hand shut over Bucky’s foot, massaging the sole of it with his thumb. Bucky sighed.

“Yeah,” he said.

“That’s good,” Steve said, and Bucky slid his foot out of Steve’s grasp and went to sit next to him. They tipped forward until their foreheads just rested together. They breathed in each other’s smells, all mixed together from a night and half a morning getting tangled up, skin to skin.

“You’re right,” Bucky said, drawing back at last and looking around. “This place, this is sort of our place for now, we really should fix the chair. Make it nice, while we got it.”

“It would probably be all right with some glue,” Steve said. “We can go down and get some.”

“Oh, boy, you think the Army has glue, Steve? Or did you bring some of that from California, too?”

“Don’t make fun, I didn’t know where we’d be, and anyhow, what else would we have done--”

“Fry oil?” Bucky suggested. “You know, powdered eggs aren’t too bad if you deep-fry ‘em. I think we could even get a shovel involved.”

Steve shook his head. “See, you don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, don’t I?”

“You said it was just eggs.”

“Yeah, maybe I had an idea,” Bucky said.

“You--” It looked for a second like Steve was going to keep up the banter; but he stopped and drew his chair closer to Bucky. It wobbled sideways. Everything in the little house seemed rickety. He stopped that movement, too. He stopped short of touching Bucky and just looked at him again.

“So we can glue the chair later,” Bucky said. “The roof, though.” He glanced up with a sigh, “I guess that’s it for that.”

“It lets the light in. I was drawing you in it. It’s good light for drawing, especially this time of day. Look.”

Bucky looked; there he was, a picture of him bent over his letter and scribbling. Steve had caught how he had his bottom lip between his teeth and worried it while he wrote. He’d caught the little lines by his eyes, squint lines.

“That’s really good.” But it made him feel funny, looking at the picture Steve had drawn of him, too; it made him feel exposed.

“Thanks,” Steve said, still studying him.

“Hey,” Bucky said, thinking back to the chair. “What did the little wooden man say when someone asked him how he was feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said.

“Glue me,” Bucky said. “Get it? Gloomy.”

“You know, you don’t have to worry about telling me anything,” Steve said.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “I don’t…” He stared down at the paper, at the picture of himself Steve had drawn. Steve had drawn him often enough at home, before. Those pictures had looked different, had a polish to them, a distance. This picture wasn’t like that. Maybe Steve could see better, now; maybe he had better than perfect vision, too. So he saw Bucky, not as he had been back home, not as he had been cracking jokes and laughing, but in the quiet moments, the moments Bucky had tried like hell not to let him see.

“Bucky, you think I can’t handle hearing something you’re thinking? You think I want to just sit and look at you with something hanging over you like that? I hated it when you wouldn’t tell me stuff in letters. I hated it. We don’t have censors here, it’s just us. You don’t have any reason not to tell me what’s on your mind.”

Bucky let out a breath and shut his eyes. When he opened them, Steve was still there. He grabbed Bucky’s hand and held it, held it between long, sensitive fingers whose grip had become very strong.

“I didn’t not tell you things because I thought you couldn’t handle it,” Bucky said.

“I hope not. Because, like you said in your letter with the socks, the wet socks. I don’t mind that. I want that; I’m not afraid of hearing the truth. You know that.”

“No, it’s me,” Bucky said. He pulled one hand back from Steve’s, then reached forward again, holding him by the wrist. “I can’t--when I wrote you letters… I didn’t want to write about a lot of things. I was scared. Like I said when I was leaving. I’m not brave. I’m just real good at pretending. Not to you. To myself. Or maybe to everyone.”

“Pretending what?”

“Everything. When I wrote you it felt like another world, it really did. It felt like I could make up a place that was just us, and not let any of the other shit in. Like I could just make things up and ignore all the rest of it, but I can’t. It’s real.”

“It _is_ real. It always _was_ real,” Steve said, and Bucky realized Steve was relieved--what had he expected Buck was gonna say? “You don’t have to make anything up. That’s why it made me sick, needing to make up those stories about what I was doing when I was just pretending, just acting like Captain America. But… it’s not always bad, pretending, if it’s what you need.”

“Captain America,” Bucky said. “The lunkhead. Hell, I didn’t even guess.”

“It’s not like it was all that likely.”

“Okay, but I seem to remember convincing you we’d landed on the moon that time.”

“I knew we hadn’t.”

“You mean I collected all those damn rocks for nothing?”

“Not for nothing,” Steve said. “I just knew it wasn’t really the moon; I didn’t mind. Fort Greene Park behind the rocks was just as good.”

“It seems awfully silly now, I guess.”

“Silly? You’re talking to a man who runs around in tights and a cowl, Bucky.”

“I keep telling you I _like_ the tights.”

“Well, I like your damn _jokes_ ,” Steve said, “Even the lousy ones.”

“We’ll be a regular funny book duo, won’t we. Best of Yank Magazine.” Bucky shook his head and smiled--a little smile, one that felt tight on his face and faded fast.

“So what were you writing in the letter that got you all down in the mouth?” Steve said, leaning closer, bracing his elbows on his thighs and his knees against Bucky’s.

Bucky looked down. Their interlaced fingers rested between them, just at the join where their knees touched. Bucky needed that: touch.

“I was writing to Lou’s family. You know Lou from the letters, and all. Anyway, we had a pact, see. I told him I’d write his folks if he didn’t make it and he said he’d write mine, so I had to do that. I lied to Billie, you know. Though he knew anyway. That’s why I lied. Because he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want me to say it. Even me being such a poetical fella with how I wound up saying it to Lou’s family.” But the self-praise rang hollow and rueful on its way out.

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he shook his head and went on anyhow. “I bet Lou’s family appreciates that,” he said. “The way you use words. That someone like you--that smart--admired him.”

“Better than a singing telegram,” Bucky said at last.

(That was another joke he had heard in a USO show. A lady gets a telegram. And she goes, hey, what’s with just the lousy telegram? Why not make it a singing telegram? And the guy goes, I don’t know if you-- and she goes, No, I want a singing telegram! And the guy goes, okay, lady, if that’s what you really want. He starts to hum and dance, and then he goes: Fred and the kids are dead, hey! and the lady faints.

Lou hadn’t laughed at that joke at all, and for once neither had Dugan or Bucky.)

“Oh, geez.” But Steve didn’t rag on him, just squeezed his hands and waited.

“He was real smart, too,” Bucky went on, almost like he hadn’t interrupted himself with a dumb joke. “I told you, he sang opera and knew Italian and stuff. We were the city guys. The thing is, he never laughed at any of my jokes and I know why. He was kind of a bellyacher. I guess he didn’t like how I tried to take things lightly. I see his _point._ Because there he is, spread all over the fucking battlefield at Azzano. He’d fuckin’ say I told you so from up in Heaven, if he even got there, the _bastard._ I don’t mean that. But I just keep thinking how it could’ve been me, and how it almost was me, and how I’m so glad it wasn’t but it feels like fucking luck. And it should be. It should be luck; because I wasn’t any better than him. I wasn’t. I mean you dragged me out of there, so it wasn’t luck, it was you, but how’d I even live through the battle? Why? None of it makes any _sense_ …” Once he’d got going he couldn’t stop.

“It doesn’t always make sense, Buck. You just did the best you could. Even if it is random, which I don’t think it is… I really don’t…”

Bucky wasn’t going to talk Steve around on this one, and he didn’t want to.

“You did your best,” Steve said. “The best job you could’ve done. I know that about you. You did everything you could to keep the other guys alive.”

“It never feels like enough.”

Steve sighed and fell out of the rhythm he’d been in, the rhythm of automatic reassurance like a rickety rocking chair creaking across the floor; like any friendly old argument, groaning and whining its comfortable way back and forth. “Yeah,” Steve said. “It sometimes doesn’t feel like enough for me, either. Just doing the job they want you to do.”

“It’s enough,” Bucky said, bringing the argument back.

“You can say it to me, huh?” Steve said. “But I can’t say it to you?”

Bucky said, “Forget enough. You’re too _much_.”

“But you like it,” Steve said, “You said so.”

Bucky glanced down, then up again. “You win. Geez, you win again, you win a lot lately. Wanna come here and kiss me?”

Steve did, pulling his hands gently free from Bucky’s grasp and sliding them down Bucky’s back over the soft stuff of his coat, pulling him in close. His tongue delved into Bucky’s mouth, liquid and circling and slow; so slow Bucky had to let go thinking for a minute and just remember to breathe through his nose.

“Good?” Steve said at last, pulling back.

“You’re getting really good at kissing.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

“You sound like the damn Almanac sometimes, I swear.”

“Oh, do you want me to stop?”

“No. I didn’t say it wasn’t true.” Bucky raised an eyebrow at Steve. “Your turn, now. You’re looking at me funny.”

“I just… you know I’m afraid, too, right? It’s not like I’m not afraid. I worry like crazy I won’t be a good enough officer, since all of you have so much more experience. And apparently I sound like the Almanac now, what with all the Captain America speeches.”

“A wise guy once told me something about practice makes perfect. Or maybe I read that in the Almanac. I dunno. So hard to tell the difference.”

“Jerk.”

“I think you’ll do fine once you get a little practice. You did do fine, Steve, you saved all our asses. That’s not nothing.”

Steve blew out a breath and settled. Bucky watched the rearrangement of big muscles in his shoulders with interest. “Okay,” Steve said.

“You’re not a lunkhead,” Bucky said.

“Wow. High praise. Not a lunkhead.”

“If you got me going on all the other things you aren’t we’d be here all day.”

“Aren’t we gonna be?”

“Huh,” Bucky said. “I guess we are.”

Steve played with the buttons on Bucky’s shirt, undoing them one by one. He touched Bucky’s skin each time he got his shirt further open, the imprint of his hand cold for a moment and then burning hot. Bucky slid down in his chair and hooked his leg under Steve’s knee, pulling them even closer.

“You were saying something about practice,” Bucky said.

* * *

 “We’re only gonna have this place for another day,” Bucky said, kicking at the door on the way out to dinner. “Not sure why I got so hung up on wanting to fix it. But I do. It seems important. A lot of guys do that. Isn’t that crazy? You know something Lou did once? We were right on the march and we knew we’d have to move out before nightfall. But he dug a foxhole anyhow. Really made a good job of it, tucked in his bedroll, set up a lamp and everything. And then sure enough we got our orders and he had to leave the damn thing behind, just all that wasted energy. But it seemed important.”

Steve said, “I guess it made him feel better to be doing something.”

“I guess it was how he made it home,” Bucky said. “Like it’s practice, for the real thing; remembering how to make things nice, because… you know, someday. Someday you’ll be back somewhere and you’ll want to remember how to make things nice.”

They continued down the hill in thoughtful silence, pausing to pick a gnarled apple from a tree. It was pretty dried out, but Bucky shared it with Steve anyway, trading bite for bite as they handed it across. Bucky held the core in his palm for a long moment, feeling the bitten inside of the apple where their teeth had grazed it wet against his skin.

Steve said, “Bucky…” and Bucky knew what he was gonna say, it had been building in the air all day: home. “You know you could…”

He said, “No, Steve.”

Steve said, “I meant what I said to Billie.”

Bucky said, “I know.” He squeezed his hand shut around the apple core and then turned to fling it away; it spiraled through the air and disappeared into frosty grass. He said, “Nah. We got that chair to fix, and all.”

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to beta [stripyjamjar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stripyjamjar/pseuds/stripyjamjar) and also to [hansbekhart](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hansbekhart/pseuds/hansbekhart) for the look-over!


End file.
